Can you give the physics history in the Philippnes?

Answer 1

Physics was first taught at the tertiary level in Australia at the University of Sydney. Since the University's beginning in 1852, John Smith, one of the three foundation professors, taught experimental philosophy, along with chemistry and Morris Pell, another of the three foundation professors, taught the mathematical parts of physics as part of mathematics.

Smith was appointed well before laboratory instruction became part of training in physics. After Smith's death, Richard Threlfall, fresh from working with J.J.Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, was appointed Professor of Physics in 1886. By 1888 Threlfall had built Australia's first Physical Laboratory which was acknowledged to be as good as any physical laboratory in the world at that time. This laboratory made a profound impression on contemporaries such as William Bragg and Ernest Rutherford, then commencing their careers, and became the model for the rest of the country.



Threlfall's Physical Laboratory circa 1890. Now known as the Badham Building

At the laboratory's completion, Threlfall pursued a vigorous and varied research program supported by his able assistant and successor in the Chair, James Arthur Pollock, and many of the final year physics students. Accurate measurement, at times astonishingly so (currents as small as 10^-13 amperes; 1 part in 500,000 for g, the acceleration due to gravity), was the touchstone of the program's achievement for which Threlfall was admitted to Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS).

Pollock, as professor from 1899 to 1922, consolidated the research tradition assisted by his subsequent successor in the Chair, Oscar Vonwiller. They were joined in time by three other members of staff. Pollock is best remembered for being the first to describe the 'pinch' effect, a concept basic in plasma physics research, and for discovering a new class of ion in the atmosphere. Pollock too was rewarded with an FRS in 1916 while on active service on the Western Front.

The present physics building was built in response to the rapid expansion in student population following The Great War. It's design by Leslie Wilkinson, first Professor of Architecture, in Mediterranean style with classical details, specified its length to be exactly 1/10 mile ( to 3 significant figures). This was no doubt an architectural statement about the business carried on within its walls. Pollock died in office and never saw the building's completion in 1924. It had ample room not only for physics, but mathematics and cancer research as well.



The present Physics building, about the time of its completion in 1924.

Research between the wars was carried out with one fewer member of the permanent staff than before the Great War. Each member was responsible for a different field. Vonwiller concentrated on optics. George Briggs, after obtaining a Cambridge PhD under Rutherford, took nuclear physics. A newcomer from Oxford, Associate Professor Victor Bailey, specialised in ionospheric work. Edgar Booth, more of a generalist, co-authored a very popular text book for senior high school students with Phyllis Nicol, who was the second woman physics graduate from Sydney. Bailey was appointed to a Chair of Experimental Physics in the mid-thirties and is best remembered for explaining 'The Luxembourg Effect' - interference in the reflecting properties of the ionosphere used in short-wave radio broadcasts by a second transmitter located half-way between the first transmitter and receiver.

During the Second World War Vonwiller headed Optical Munitions work in the basement of the physics building which employed 140 people working a 144 hour week. The expertise developed here and at other physics departments was allowed to languish after the war and the basis of an indigenous optical industry dissolved. Bailey headed a radar training course of the highest calibre for the three services. Hundreds of operators who could service their own equipment were put into the battle theatres of the Pacific Islands and on board Navy ships. This story has yet to told in full, having only recently emerged from wartime secrecy.

After the war Vonwiller retired and a successor was not appointed for seven years. Harry Messel, a Canadian wartime paratrooper and later Cosmic Ray theoretician under Erwin Schrodinger (who was one of the founders of Quantum Mechanics), was appointed in 1952 (one century after the first Sydney appointment) with a liberal warrant to rejuvenate the department. This he did with a vengeance: he increased the permanent staff to 21 including a team of full-time theoreticians, had the first electronic computer to be used in an Australian University built locally and established research in several departments with individual professorial heads to form a School of Physics. He also established the first Foundation in the British Commonwealth to get big business involved in funding research, something the rest of Australian Universities are now doing more than 40 years later. First named The Nuclear Research Foundation when expectations were high that private enterprise would be involved in power generation, it is now known as The Science Foundation for Physics within the University of Sydney. It still to this day funds professional support that enables Physics at Sydney to maintain its international reputation.

Messel appointed Bernard Mills FRS to head Astrophysics and build the Mills Cross radio telescope and Robert Hanbury-Brown FRS to head Astronomy and build the Brown-Twiss stellar interferometer. Charles Watson-Munro, who had wide international experience in atomic energy at the top level, was chosen to head Plasma Physics and become part of the international effort to achieve power production through fusion of nuclei. Brian McCusker, his old boss from the Dublin Institute of Advanced, pursued research in Cosmic Radiation, which even to this day has particles of energy beyond what accelerators can hope to achieve. John Bennett became the first professor of computing in Australia and Stuart Butler was chosen to head Theoretical Physics. Butler had made outstanding contributions to the study of deuteron stripping reactions and was part of the Sydney team that solved the riddle of superconductivity but did not get THE prize that went to Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer.

Later Messel added a department of Applied Physics with particular emphasis on solar energy. He himself headed an environmental group based in the Northern Territory and centred on crocodiles. These reptiles were trapped, had transmitters attached to them, then were released and tracked remotely as part of the study of their habits. Whole river systems had to be charted accurately as part of a truly pioneering undertaking.

Messel also led in reform of science education. Summer schools for physics teachers quickly grew into International Science Schools for high school students. The students came from all states in Australia, as well as the USA, UK, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. The lecturers were international scientific leaders and not just confined to physics. He also assembled a team of scientists and science teachers to produce high school text-books pioneering an integrated approach to science teaching.

Messel retired in 1987 but did not quit the international or national stage. He was the last of the permanent heads of school. Professors Max Brennan, Lawrence Cram, Ross McPhedran and now Richard Collins have directed the School's fortunes since Messel's departure.

Despite a severe funding squeeze on national research through various government policies, the School has continued to perform vigorously. Education continues to be an integral part of the School's work, which has led to the formation of the Physics Education Research (SUPER) Group. The department of Physical Optics was created in 1989 under Colin Sheppard to explore the burgeoning field of modern optics. The Special Research Centre for Theoretical Astrophysics under Don Melrose, current head of the Theoretical Department, welds together the efforts of the Astronomy Department and its state of the art Michelson stellar interferometer, the Astrophysics Department with its synthesis radiotelescope and specially appointed theoretical specialists. This was the only Centre of Excellence involved in pure research in Australia funded in the initial round of this programme. The High Energy Department, that evolved from Cosmic Ray research, has joined forces with physics at the University of Melbourne to build detectors for use at C.E.R.N. to keep Australian physics at the leading edge of elementary particle research. The frontiers of the very big and small, which are both needed to study the origins of the Universe, continue to supply the biggest research challenges facing physics today. Physics at Sydney, 145 years on, continues to be measured by the best.

Answer 2

I imagine certain formalized learning in the science of physics came to the Philippines with the Spanish, and got a boost when the U.S. took over from them (built some schools, and like that).

Answer 3

Sure, are you talking science or physical type of physics.

Answer 4

WHAT A STUPID QUESTION!!